Ontario municipalities are facing a deadline. Under provincial Regulation 588/17, they must have an asset management policy in place by July 2019, followed by targets for Levels of Service by July 2021. These requirements makes good business sense. To manage infrastructure appropriately, you need to know what you have and what condition it’s in. An [...]
The primary goal of wastewater treatment is to remove organic material and nutrients that can hurt lakes and rivers and be detrimental to human health. No question, that’s a critical job. But more and more municipalities across Ontario are adding a second objective: extracting value from wastewater. And there’s plenty of value to squeeze out. [...]
In Canada, boil water advisories in First Nation communities regularly make headlines. Unfortunately, thousands of First Nation households across the country cannot drink the water that comes out of their tap. One of the big challenges of ensuring safe drinking water in remote areas is the shortage of qualified operators to oversee treatment systems. In [...]
When summer storms roll through southern Ontario, city officials depend on stormwater management ponds to store runoff, keep pollutants out of lakes and rivers and prevent basements from flooding. Today, however, municipalities are increasingly adding Low Impact Development (LID) technologies to complement those ponds. Peppered throughout urban environments, these inconspicuous landscape features may take the [...]
As 2018 draws to an end, SOWC reflects on a busy and productive past year. We wanted to take this opportunity to revisit some of this year’s highlights. We shared a story about the amazing women driving AWT projects And [...]
Across North America, drinking water treatment plants have to keep trihalomethanes (THMs) — a potential carcinogen — below strict limits. However, if they don’t have sophisticated gas chromatography equipment and trained specialists on site, plants must rely on commercial labs to test their samples. That means waiting up to a week to get results, which [...]
What a difference a couple of years can make. When we first introduced you to Greyter Water Systems in 2016, the Ontario-based company was fine-tuning its new residential greywater product. By filtering shower and bath water so it can be reused for flushing toilets, the Greyter HOME system can cut household water consumption an impressive [...]
It is estimated that Canada’s wastewater treatment plants produce as much as 660,000 tonnes of dried sludge in a year. While a portion of the sludge may be treated and recycled as fertilizer, most facilities dispose of the remainder through landfills or incineration, placing a strain on their operating costs as well as on the [...]
Phosphorus is getting a bad rap these days — and with good reason. According to recent estimates, humans are pumping 10 million tonnes of this nutrient into the world’s lakes and rivers each year[1] with results that can be devastating. In 2014, for example, a massive bloom of blue-green algae, fueled by phosphorus, turned large [...]
Every year, diseases caused by contaminated drinking water kills hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Detecting contamination early — before dangerous microorganisms have a chance to multiply — would save countless lives. Right now, however, testing water samples means sending them to a lab. In remote communities, or even in big cities like [...]
